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Jakarta Post

Local polls could suffer from budget woes

Regional elections scheduled to be held concurrently in December 2015 could suffer from budget shortages with some regions now experiencing budget deficits

Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Thu, April 9, 2015

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Local polls could suffer from budget woes

R

egional elections scheduled to be held concurrently in December 2015 could suffer from budget shortages with some regions now experiencing budget deficits.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) said on Wednesday that some Regional General Elections Commissions (KPUDs) had to struggle to find additional funds as the government only approved a portion of their budget proposals.

'€œThis has happened in some regions where the KPUDs proposed election budgets to the Regional Legislative Council [DPRD] and the regional administration only approved less than 70 percent [of the proposed budgets],'€ KPU commissioner Arief Budiman said during a meeting with the Home Ministry and the Finance Ministry in Central Jakarta.

Some regions only had less than 50 percent of their budget proposals approved, he said.

'€œ[With that money], paying the salaries [for election workers] will not be enough, let alone buying logistics for the balloting,'€ said Arief.

Another problem could be the timing of the budget disbursement, which is expected to be very late.

'€œThe schedule of the election is tight so we expect a quick disbursement of the funds,'€ Arief said.

The law on regional elections stipulates that the elections would be funded mainly by local budgets (APBD), with the state budget (APBN) only used for the operation of the central KPU.

Out of 269 regions scheduled to hold concurrent regional elections this year, 201 regions will have leaders whose tenures expired in 2015.

The remaining 68 regions had expected to hold regional elections in 2017 only to find out later that their leaders'€™ tenures would expire in the first semester of 2016.

However, the law on regional elections, which was recently passed in February 2015, stipulates that elections in the 68 regions should be held in December 2015 instead.

'€œSo within one month, they [the KPUDs] have to prepare so many things. This will be too much for them especially on the issue of budgeting,'€ Arief said.

In Central Java, at least five regencies '€” Pemalang, Grobogan, Demak, Sragen and Pekalongan '€” are facing budget shortages as they prepare for the elections later this year.

Central Java KPUD head Joko Purnomo said that some of these regions were still uncertain about their sources of funding.

In Pekalongan regency, no sources had been identified for the Rp 24 billion (US$1.8 million) budget proposed by the regency'€™s election commission and its monitoring committee.

'€œThe local administration argued that the 2015 regency budget has been allocated,'€ Joko said recently.

Meanwhile, Demak regency could only allocate Rp 4 billion of the total Rp 20 billion it needs for the election.

Thus far, of the 68 regions, only 52 have submitted their budget proposals to the KPU.

'€œThere should be a special policy [from the central government] to solve this problem. We can'€™t allow the regional elections to be delayed because of budgeting problems,'€ KPU commissioner Ferry Kurnia Rizkiyansyah said on Wednesday.

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